Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday April 18, 2011 @11:30PM
from the blood-from-a-stone dept.

Technologizer reports on this unwelcome development for used game buyers:
"SOCOM 4: US Navy Sealscharts a new course in punishing used game buyers, and it’s at once better and worse than the status quo of $10 online passes. As described on the official Playstation Blog, SOCOM 4 will let all players access the game’s multiplayer portion — as it should, because online play has always been SOCOM’s main attraction — but used game buyers will miss out on special guns, game types, and other perks to be added later. To get these features with a used copy of the game, you’ll have to buy a $15 activation code. Sony’s spinning this bundle of features, dubbed 'SOCOM Pro,' as an enhancement for new game buyers, rather than a drawback for used copies. It’s semantics, sure, but it’s also the direction in which these used game restrictions should be going."

How is this any different than PC games that have CD keys that you need to install, and that you key in when you register them? How is this any different than me selling my MMO CDs to a friend and then laughing when he can not get online?

The game basically is giving you access to an online profile, that when you sell off the disk, if you want your own new online profile, you have to pay $15 for.

How is this any different than just about every other game with online components? Ten years ago if I wanted to sign into Nova World with a used version of the game, it would have already been registered with that CD key. How is this any different?

It's not. As usual people on slashdot will cry over something they'll never intented to play anyway, just because it's DRM and about the used games market. It's like game play for these people is crying about it on slashdot rather than actually even wanting to play the game.

Look, if I want to play the game I can pay the $15 (if I bought a used copy, which I never do).

I'm surprised you can still buy used games at all. Considering I only purchase digital copies (perhaps due to my innate fear of leaving my apt, or perhaps the utterly horrible sales associates), I have never partaken in this 'used' video game market.

Used games will surely disappear in our digital age soon enough, so this is sure to be only be a fleeting policy.

On a side note, I actually did go into a Gamestop the other day to see if they had splitter for my Kinect (I got the new one with an xbox), so I

consider the buyer that currently buys a release date game on the undestanding he can polish it off in 2 weeks and resell for 1/2 value. That guy might buy 1/2 as many games without a used games market and since early adopters are a much touted statistic ("X00,000 copies sold in first 2 weeks" etc). Losing resale guy is not a great idea.

Because what you seem to be missing is that sites like GS allow someone who has beaten games to trade them towards the purchase of NEW games they would most likely not make without? Aka lets slit our own throats by making our item less attractive then our competitors?

Plus it is kinda ignoring the elephants in the room which are in no particular order "its a recession dumbass" and "I can get it for $0 dollars!". Hacked X360s? You can get ALL day long on Craigslist for around $100 bucks. Can't play it online?

It's sort of like torrenting, but instead of seeding when you're done, you actually give the seeder MONEY (I know, right?!) instead. It's a pretty risky proposition though. The games usually don't work right, and a lot of times they come with wicked malware that's a bitch to clean off.

As usual people on slashdot will cry over something they'll never intented to play anyway, just because it's DRM and about the used games market.

The problem is not whether you want to play that particular game, but that if this ploy works then it will be extended to other games - and eventually all games. When activation started for PC games I stayed away from those titles. Fine, I said, I will just move on to the next game. But then after a while, the next game (and the one after that) started doing the same thing. Now it is hard to find a big-name title that doesn't use it.

So what happens after people get used to this activation on installation? T

It's really a fitting analogy, but if only the big game companies (Sony/Microsoft included) weren't so damn pissy about used games in general, this wouldn't be a bother. I cannot stand their tantrums about used sales "killing the industry". As if used car sales kill the automotive industry... or used books/CDs kill their respective markets. It just doesn't happen that way, and their "service without the service" mentality is what is going to cause them to nickel and dime the player until he or she simply tosses the console in the closet and goes back to minesweeper.:)

The First Sale Doctrine really chaps their asses. This is their way of "play ball with me and I promise I won't shove the bat up your ass."

Does not compute. When owner 1 has sold their two games (And where does that stupid part about them pirating anything come from? How can owner 2 buy three games from owner 1 when owner 1 only has purchased two games? WTF?!) they will, in all likelihood, take those $ 40 they saved, put another $ 20 on top and buy another freshly released game. Which they most likely could not afford to do if they could not recover some of the cost from reselling - otherwise they would not need to sell their games at all. Own

You forgot to mention that the second buyer usually only gets the game way after it came out (unless piracy was also involved...). That is, first user has to buy game, play it, get bored with it and resell it.

So not only does the second player get a slightly wrinkled manual, but also he gets a game which is no longer hip. So it's normal that he saves some money on it. No need to "punish" him additionally by crippling the game.

The real problem with the used games market is that it's worse than piracy.

Horsecrap! Lets take a much more complicated scenario, but to simplify it, we'll ignore the details that don't matter.

A. New game is purchased for $X. Game developers get their cut, $C.B. Game changes hands some unknown number of times, possibly with intermediaries involved, possibly not.C. Final result, one and only one person owns that one copy of the game which was fully paid for.

All the other details (how much some hypothetical intermediaries might have made and so on) are completely irrelevant. One copy was sold to one owner, and one owner now owns one copy. That's all the developers can and should care about. The fact that they may be jealous of Gamestop's insane profits doesn't mean they deserve one nickel more money or that Gamestop is doing anything wrong. (Actually, they are doing something wrong, but selling used games is not it.)

Gamestore through reselling probably made far more in profit from selling used than new copies.

Gamestop has a near monopoly, and they're abusing it badly. Now, that's still not a problem for the developers (no matter how jealous they might feel about the situation), but it's a problem for us. Unfortunately, the only way to deal with a monopoly is to create competition (or regulate it, and I sincerely hope we don't come to that pass). So the game devs are jealous of all the perfectly legal abusive profits that Gamestop is making? Answer is obvious: open their own stores, and compete on used game prices. If there were competition in the used games market, Gamestop wouldn't be able to charge their insane markups (and they are insane).

Note that it doesn't have to be the developers competing directly with Gamestop--I only suggest them because they're the ones that whine about Gamestop's monopolistic profit margins. It could as easily be Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Radio Shack. The point is, Gamestop's insane profits don't come because there's something wrong with selling used games; they come because there's no competition, so they don't have to compete on price. Period.

If I could buy a 'brand new' 2008 car whose owner's manual was wrinkled at 2008 car prices I would happily do it.

The gaming experience of a used title is identical as a new one the only difference being that Gamestop gets $20 in revenue and the developers get nothing.

That doesn't make it ok for a game publisher to artificially introduce a degradation just because the laws of physics are different to the laws of information. If you buy a car that's only 6 months old, you're getting a car that is better than if you buy a car that is 6 years old. How should that be modelled in this "emulated degradation" scheme? It's ridiculous. Your example is interesting, but by making piracy easier they would also make re-selling easier, you can't really allow one while disallowing the

The problem is, the first sale doctrine can arguably be only relevant to the CD and manual, because the wording used when selling these games to users is that you buy the game, but included is only one key for accessing their network, and once used, that key is locked to that user account, and cannot be used to create a new account. The company cannot stop you from selling your CD and manual, but if you've used the one time key, the buyer of your used game is out of luck (unless you give him the username,

Now wait a moment. Where the XBox360 is concerned, users pay for access to the multiplayer network. I don't use anything Sony but I think PSN is free though... free to people who own a PS3 or whatever. In either case, the access has been paid for. The game has been paid for. Providing lesser service until an additional cost is paid is a tax.

While we are at it, let's do the same thing for people who received their game consoles and games as a gift! After all, they didn't pay for them either right?

One player is giving another player his copy of the game. For each copy of the game sold, they can and should expect that there will be that number of clients online. While the client may have changed, the number of clients will not have. Thus, there are no extra costs for server maintenance/load.

A player is expected to have a finite life as an active user, probably less than two years. The price of the game is set based on assumptions about the attrition rate.
Giving the game to another user extends the length of time the server load exists for that copy of the software.

A player is expected to have a finite life as an active user, probably less than two years. The price of the game is set based on assumptions about the attrition rate.
Giving the game to another user extends the length of time the server load exists for that copy of the software.

Tough shit for the developers, accept it as a cost of business and move on.
The nanosecond that someone figures a way to play with a private server, they lose a paying customer forever when someones friend of a friend shows him how to play online for free and becomes a pirate in the process.
EA Sports and such can get away with this because of the nature of their business, because that copy of Madden 12 is really only played online for 18 months tops before it becomes obsolete anyway.

What happens if your XBOX dies and you have to get a new one? Is it tied to the machine or your XBL account? If it is the XBL account then how many can use it at once? (lots of people have 5 or more accounts for their family)

It seems like however it works even the person who bought it new could easily be screwed by this DRM.

is that sarcasm ???
Extra cost they imposed on themselves. At some point in time (PC mostely) there was the possibility to have private dedicated servers (the osftware came with the games : Unreal, Unreal Tournament Quack... etc) for anyone who wished to host one... and there were no extra cost for anyone except may be for those who chose to host the servers.

How is this any different than PC games that have CD keys that you need to install, and that you key in when you register them?

When it was just that, it wasn't a problem. Most of my old games would happily install on your machine if I sold you the disc and you typed in the key. The keys were stickers on the jewel cases, and there was none of this draconian "You can only install this game 5 times, and only on Tuesdays"

How is this any different than me selling my MMO CDs to a friend and then laughing when he can not get online?

Because it's not a subscription service that you could download the client for free anyway unless someone scammed you as in your example? You're comparing apples and steaks here.

The game basically is giving you access to an online profile, that when you sell off the disk, if you want your own new online profile, you have to pay $15 for.

How do I access that profile once I sell the game? I bought it, right?

How is this any different than just about every other game with online components?

It's not *now*. And therein lies the problem. It's an end run around the first sale doctrine by basically saying, "We didn't sell you that, we "licensed" it to you". Imagine if you couldn't buy a used car without paying Ford a "transfer fee" for the keys.

Personally... I've never sold a game in my life, or bought one used for that matter... the few bucks just isn't worth the hassle. But many, many people do - because they can't afford to buy everything they want new. There is a fairly huge secondary market with console games, and the game companies want to eliminate it because they somehow think people will magically have more money to spend.

game companies want to eliminate it because they somehow think people will magically have more money to spend.

To be fair there is some logic in that. If a person has Â£40 they can buy one new game or three second hand ones. If there are no second hand games then they are forced to buy new ones and the developer profits.

Of course it is still total bullshit, the second hand market is just a part of business. The developers could even get in on it if they wanted to, say by offering trade-ins/upgrades or making older games available for paid download.

Not being able to resell such software is bullshit though. They only get away with it on PCs because you've always had to install it. Console discs are no different than a movie or music disc or even a book. Blocking resale of this stuff should be criminal.

It will affect initial sales also. Some people do not have the capacity to buy more games without selling their old games. Since the value of resale is reduced their purchasing power is also reduced and then the trumpets complaining of the PIRATES will emerge demanding more compensation and stiffer laws.

I spend less with mainstream and more with indies due to DRM. I moved from PC gaming to console due to the cheats only to realize that it's the poor quality of the games that makes it feel that people are ch

Until fairly recently you could either pay $50+ for a new game, or wait a few months and buy the exact same game for $20 or less. Exact same content. No differences at all. You just have to wait a couple months to play it.

That was terrific for the buyer... But lousy for the publisher - because the publisher saw absolutely nothing of that second, $20 sale. That $20 sale was entirely between the buyer and whoever it was bought from - Gamestop, or some guy in

It's not just Sony doing this. EA sells these "online passes" for $10 too, for example to 2nd hand buyers of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. It is not just annoying for the used game market, but it also makes it harder to return a new game to the store if you don't like it. I have the luck that the people in my local game shop know me and trust me when i say i didn't enter the key of the supplied online pass, but i might not be so lucky if i buy it at another store. EA could have used a layer of that silver sc

This quote was originally made about a nation marching people off to the gas chambers. To use it propping up an argument about not playing a computer game is kind of lame and sullies the memory of the millions marched to their deaths. Losing the ability to play a game (copied or otherwise) is not the same as losing your life.

This sort of thing was discussed recently in the Extra credits (a weekly publication? on The escapist). They purposed that instead of trying to punish used game purchasers while trying to cut out game stop they should encourage them. Sell the game new for twenty bucks, with multi player on the disk but not accessible because hey it's just convenient. Then Sell the multiplayer as an optional online purcahse via xbox live or steam or what ever for twenty bucks. Total game cost for a few game 40 bucks, but the next profit for the game publisher/developer is more because they can charge twenty bucks for multi player and cut out the retailer on new and later used games.

This sort of thing was discussed recently in the Extra credits (a weekly publication? on The escapist). They purposed that instead of trying to punish used game purchasers while trying to cut out game stop they should encourage them. Sell the game new for twenty bucks, with multi player on the disk but not accessible because hey it's just convenient. Then Sell the multiplayer as an optional online purcahse via xbox live or steam or what ever for twenty bucks. Total game cost for a new game 40 bucks, but the net profit for the game publisher/developer is more because they can charge twenty bucks for multi player and cut out the retailer on new and later used games.

Plus with a lower price on a new game, they are more likely to get exposure to a wider audience, with the possibility for more twenty dollar multi player purchases than if they simply did it to used game owners.

They can be irrational if they want, bottom line the company wants to cut out game stop. If they do it in a way that makes it cheaper for me the gamer to buy their games brand new with all the content then I'm happy. Cash is king baby. So long as it's clear you're buying only single player content with the option to buy multi player later. I see no harm in it.

Dude, if it were just about cutting out gamestop, I'd be all for it. There are few things I find more ridiculous in this world than the practice of selling a used title for $5.00 less than the new one, except perhaps the witless sycophants who actually buy them. The 3-for-1 trade-in deal is also pretty freakin' atrocious.

But the reality is that the game industry is adopting Sony's movie and music industry practices. More money, more profiteering parasites at the executive level, and more customer abuse and FUD to justify the egregious corruption.

The funny thing is, this wouldn't be an issue at all if digital copies of games had at least price parity with hard copies. But right now the downloadable full retail titles on PSN, for example, generally maintain full list price while Amazon.com has many retailers willing to sell far below that. If a new physical copy was 60, and a new digital copy was 40, the re-sale market would dry up rather quickly. As it stands, they're trying to use digital to both raise the average price floor and remove second-h

This would also offer the benefit that people who don't want to play in multiplayer mode don't have to pay for it.But, the gaming industry being who they are, they'd still demand too much for the singleplayer version.

Used games exist. This means they were sold by someone, at some point, who owned it first hand. I'm curious how many first-hand buyers would be less likely to buy a game that has a largely diminished resell value?

Hard media is slowly going away. Like it or not, one day, games will be all downloaded. For better or worse, it's just more efficient. I don't know when, but that's just the way it will be. I like my hard copies, and you'll pry them from my crusty gout-ridden hands, but I'll be the exception.

Sadly, "used games" will likely be a nostalgia. Why do they have to fight so hard against the used market. Let us enjoy our bargain bin rummaging.

Nah, downloading will be the new standard, but for folks who don't like to wait and want to buy a physical copy, they'll have USB drives that are read-only which you can buy at your local WalGameStopBestMart. They'll call them "cartridges". Oh. Wait. Dammit.

Only in markets like US and EU, where broadband is mature will download media take over.

Australia is one of those markets (well almost, NBN will ensure it though) and physical media is going nowhere because the online alternatives are more expensive. When a new release on Steam cost $70-80 to buy and then 24 hours to download, this is compared to $50-60 to buy from Hong Kong and 1 week for shipping. If I'm going to wait 24 hours, I'll wait 1 week.

I live in India, and from news reports it does seem like broadband is mature in US with 100mbps fiber connections and download quotas above 250GB being popular, as compared to 512kbps ADSL connections, dropping to 256kbps after 8GB as a baseline here.

Cox cable is field testing 36Gb residential caps and once they roll it out nationwide and see they don't lose their entire market (because most simply have nowhere to go) you WILL see Comcast and others adopt it. See how many games you get at 36Gb with $1.50 per Gb going over why don't you?

You seem to be forgetting this is America, aka "Greed is good" land. While Asia and the EU are rolling out new pipes our ISP are figuring out ways to stick you on the short bus to the Info superhighway so they can maint

Does Steam have solid games in all genres, even those not traditionally associated with PCs? Would you be willing to make Steam game suggestions for fans of games like Animal Crossing, Super Mario Galaxy, and Super Smash Bros., who are trying to convert from Wii to PC?

I know you can get world of goo. Bejeweled. plants vs zombies. I'm sure it has a load of 2-d adventure games akin to mario as well.

Dude. Just get the steam client on your PC. Its free and you can uninstall it. I think its www.steampowered.com Yeah, just checked.

You can see all that they have in the store, check out screenpics and videos, see ratings, etc. Also, it auto-updates all your games that are on steam, via steam, at your max bandwidth, and stands as a game launcher.

"One day" probably isn't within this console generation, due in part to download caps. In some places, the average residential Internet access plan is satellite with a 10 GB/mo or smaller cap, which isn't enough to download disc-sized games along with the rest of home Internet use.

Let's hope other areas won't adapt that idea.If you buy a used car you'll only be able to use 70% of its features while the other perfectly fine working ones are artificially locked, unless you pay a ransom to the car manufacturer.

Hey there, consumer, I'm afraid that the ECU firmware is licensed, not sold, and licenses are not transferable. Can I sign you up for a new support agreement?

I suspect that it would be a riskier move, since it would leave a much larger population feeling alienated; but it isn't obviously the case that contemporary cars would be any more immune to software-licensing related bullshit than would other firmware-dependent hardware devices(the ones with OnStar or equivalent can even phone home...)

No, but modern cars almost invariably use a lot of onboard computer systems, and interrogating those systems requires a device which is only available to the franchised dealers.

OBD-II attempts to work around this by providing a legally-mandated, standardised diagnostics system. I'm given to understand that manufacturers are known to work around this mandate by ensuring that if you hook up a plain OBD-II diagnostics machine, the car gives the bare minimum information it has to. If you hook up the official

Seriously. While I can understand Sony's position of "used games = no money" for them, their repeated attempts to stifle user choice pretty much means that unless Sony is THE only option left on earth, you shouldn't be buying from them.

If someone demanded $300 and then kicked you in the nuts, would you give them more money when they demanded another $50? And then again when they demanded another $10-15? And then again when they insist you re-pay for everything you've bought because they've decided to shi

The fundamental difference is that I didn't outlay $600 for the console then another $100 for a game when I was playing in the arcade. I just shoveled "quarters" into the machine.

The WoW model works well - you buy the game disc (albeit at a fairly discounted rate) or download for free and then pay a monthly subscription to play. Seems a lot of people shovel money at that model. I don't get why the/. community is up in arms about what is essentially a variant on the WoW model, but with the "subscription" in

I genuinely hope this progresses to the logical extreme of "buy multiplayer direct from us", because then I won't have to subsidize/pay for something I don't use. And the publishers will realise how lousy the carbon copy multiplayer side of their tired franchise is when it's reviewed separately, and stop stapling it on to a watered down campaign just to keep a game in people's disc trays until the DLC comes out or the servers shut down. I've never played a SOCOM game in my life, and I bet that I'm not missing out on much compared to say, the very first chapter of Dead Space 2?

I would have bought Starcraft 2 on launch day if Blizzard sold a $30 version without multiplayer (I heard they do have separate digital SKUs in Korea). Those cyborgs can have their battle.net, I want the story and maybe I'll feel like playing it again in a year's time. $30 would be worth that for me, I don't want to pirate it, I want some god damn consumer choice! (andfirstsaledoctrinethanksverymuch)

Seems to me Bungie has a good thing going. Once in a while I think about getting a Bungie Pro account because, y'know, lookit-mah-space-lazorz, but then I get distracted by other games for 6 or 7 months. I play games like other people read novels. Multiplayer shooters are the trashy romance side of the industry, a cash cow with puerile thrills and little substance.

I would have bought Starcraft 2 on launch day if Blizzard sold a $30 version without multiplayer (I heard they do have separate digital SKUs in Korea). Those cyborgs can have their battle.net, I want the story and maybe I'll feel like playing it again in a year's time. $30 would be worth that for me, I don't want to pirate it, I want some god damn consumer choice! (andfirstsaledoctrinethanksverymuch)

$30 version of Starcraft 2, not bloody likely.

A large part of the 100 mil that went into making it was the sheer amount of CGI and voice work that went into the pre-rendered scenes in the single player.
A lot of games only have a few minutes of CG or none at all because it's so damned expensive to produce.
that being said, I like multiplayer starcraft but haven't played a single on-line game of SC2.

We all know where this is leading: game developers are going to end up locking games to the system on which they're installed, and refusing to allow installs to new systems. Console engineers will make this as easy as possible because they only make money when you buy a new game too. This will of course destroy the used games market, which is the only reason they're delaying, because it would piss off their retail partners.

Really, what do you expect from Sony. Given that I decided to boycott Sony and affiliated products a while ago because of their business practices, this will never matter to me. I suggest you adopt a similar strategy. After all, it's just a game.

If this drives used copies of SOCOM4 down to $0.99 then I'm ok with it. IF not, then I will not be buying anything in the SOCOM franchise anymore.

It's getting bad everywhere in gaming. Halo:Reach was a incredibly short game that can be finished on Normal setting in a single weekend, it sold for full retail prices. Dragon Age II is 1/2 a game and requires you to buy all the DLC separately to get the whole game making it a $120.00 game.

Honestly, I'm done buying any video game new. IT will be used and after the ass-baggery that the game maker pulled has been revealed so I can avoid it.

Hear that gaming industry? You will not get any money directly from me anymore, I'll buy used and steal money from your babies mouths!

> No, but you'll pay somebody for a new warranty since the original is probably non-transferable.If that's the case where you live, you should try to get that fixed instead of using it as an argument for disencouraging sales of used goods.

No, but you'll pay somebody for a new warranty since the original is probably non-transferable

If that's the case where you live, you should try to get that fixed

How can a customer get that fixed when all sellers have decided to make warranties non-transferable? Are you talking about starting your own car company, running for federal office, or something I haven't thought of? If the last, please provide details.

Somehow consumer lobbies all over Europe managed to get a warranty to be attached to a device, not a customer.

You buy an item, the shopkeeper fills in the warranty card with the device serial number, you pack it up in the box with all the warranties you have, if you sell, you dig up the warranty card and hand it along with the device. Nobody asks your name or ID.

And unless the seller sells used, known-broken item (and you are clearly informed this IS broken), you get the warranty by default. One month for u

If it costs $100 million to make a shitty game like GTA IV, the game industry needs a reality check. That is some serious coin just to display cartoon figures on a TV screen. How much of that budget is being funneled to non-production assets (i.e. profiteering suits) ?

Not to mention how much of that bling bling is bullshit? How many here would play a game with Far Cry 1 level graphics if it had a kick ass story and AI that really made you think and work for it, as opposed to dumping in shit AI and expecting everyone to deal with "nigger fag" teens in online bullshit? I know I would.

At the end of the day a good 80%+ of that bling bling ends up box cover bullshit. People walk into my shop and go "ooooh neat!" when I'm sitting there playing "Brothers in Arms:Hells Highway"

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw.

Right now, the "unreasonable man" is the games industry. The unreasonable man may not always succeed in his attempts to adapt the world to himself. Indeed, he may fail 95% of the time. But the other 5% of the time, progress is made - and it's made in the direction dictated by the unreasonable man.

I'm still not quite sure why a used game buyer shouldn'tbe allowed the same benefits as a new game buyer,but in order to come to a resolution a suggestion hasto eventually be accepted. This is a descent step tosomething that is acceptable.

-AI

Any online player would be insane to buy a used game anyway. The previous owner could be selling it as they have been caught using a hack and banned.

If only you understood exactly what an abysmal portion of the proceeds actually make it to the developers...it's really not profitable unless you're one of the big mind-/face-less corporations. Even with the big guys, the money doesn't go to the programmers or the designers, it goes to executives and management.

This is a brilliant parody of a gamer with an entitlement complex. Bravo! I especially loved the subtle troll where you said million, instead of billion. If I may, I would suggest throwing in some kind of demand for a boycott. Everyone on Slashdot loves a boycott. In fact, I think we're boycotting the entirety of Europe this month.

No. The store sold me the game, on the disc. Once I'm finished playing the game, I can do whatever the hell I want with the game and the disc. If I want to give it to someone else, I don't have to ask anyone's permission. Sony or EA can't stop me from reselling the game. That's US law. I'm allowed to sell my stuff when I don't want it any more.

And do you know what most gamers do with the money they get from selling their used games? They buy MORE games. So the money in the used game markets isn't even all "